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It’s time for a new story in the “Kayray Reads to You” podcast. This is “Half Magic” by Edward Eager, a wonderful book and the first part of a whole series of in which ordinary children have magic adventures. The author acknowledges his debt to E. Nesbit in every book. I hope you enjoy this one, and I hope you’ll track down more of Eager’s books. Ooo look, here’s a lovely little boxed set!
http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Magic-Boxed-Edward-Eager/dp/0152025464!

Episode 43:
Half Magic Ch.1 How it Began – 21:09
Episode 44:
Half Magic Ch.2 What Happened to their Mother – 13:59
Episode 45:
Half Magic Ch.3 What Happened to Mark – 34:34

I use googledocs a lot. Recently they changed the default format for new docs to a horrible fixed-width page layout:

This wastes a ton of space and allows me to see far less text per screen. Also it’s ugly. I don’t need to see margins on a fake “page” when 99.99% of my documents will never be printed! And if I do want to see a page layout like this, I can just choose “view” -> “fixed-width page”.

I found a fix on this page of people complaining about this dreadful new “feature”:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Docs/thread?tid=0cf3f67e3bde8a86&hl=en

1. Go to settings (upper right hand corner)
2. Select Editing
3. Uncheck: Create new text documents using the latest version of the document editor

Now, reload googledocs, or close all its tabs and start over. New documents should be the old-style full-width layout, so just copy the text out of one of your fixed-width docs, make a new doc, and paste it in. Voila!

If google eventually decides to force everyone to always use fixed-width layouts, I guess I’ll have to find a new online text-editor.

My 41st birthday was yesterday, yay!

Dan worked from home so that was a treat right there. Henry went with me first thing in the morning to pick up the birthday cake that I ordered for myself. Got it from Flour Power. It was pretty good, though not lemony enough and with wayyyy too much frosting, but still it was tasty and festive!

Then we had breakfast (including birthday cake) and the guys gave me some lovely presents. Let’s see, I got two lovely Elizabeth Zimmermann hardbacks, The Opinionated Knitter and Knitting Around so now I have all of her books! And the new reprint of Betsy and the Great World/Betsy’s Wedding. And a pair of absolutely adorable cupcake print pajamas, the very same ones that Liz Lemon wears in 30 Rock. Cute, cute, cute!

Dan also gave me a CD recording of my favorite performance of Die Zauberflöte — 1964, Otto Klemperer conducts. Lucia Popp is Queen of the Night. My old LPs are quite worn out and warped, and now I can listen on my iPhone and through the good TV speakers! So exciting!

I took Henry to his Kung Fu lesson at noon, and then at 1 we picked him up and we all went to Chloe’s house for a few hours, which was such fun! They gave me a fantastic Breaking Bad t-shirt (ladies’ babydoll-style in lime green — better get one for yourself now before AMC shuts them down!). Heisenburg! Lordy, we have to wait until July 2011 for more new episodes.

Celia gave me the “Free To Be… You And Me” CD! We were hanging out a couple weeks ago and someone said something about a boy with a doll… oh, it was their cat we were talking about. He has a little lion toy that he thinks is his kitten. Anyway Celia and I both started singing William’s Doll, and it freaked me out that she knew it! And she told me she had the CD, and I asked if I could borrow it someday, and she remembered, and gave me my own copy! Kirsten and I must have listened to that record 8,682,392,734 times when we were little and it’s so much fun to get to hear it again, all clear and nice and remastered. Our record had a skip in the “Atalanta” story, so Alan Alda said, “So he told Atalanta, so he told Atalanta, so he told Atalanta, so he told Atalanta,” until someone got up and moved the needle. My new CD doesn’t do that, heh :)

Chloe drew me a picture that illustrates elements of 13 of our favorite iPhone games. She’s amazing! I’ll replace this with a better photo tomorrow, but you can get a pretty good idea. If you go to the flickr page you can see notes that tell the name of each game. I love it so much!

And then in the evening, after Celia’s mom had picked her up, we brought Chloe back over to our house by way of a good Mexican take-out place, and then Bob came over and we watched “James May at the Edge of Space” and then “Hud” (1963, Paul Newman) which I love but none of them had even seen and I think they all liked it as much as I do.

So it was a very happy day!

Here are the last two chapters of part 3 of This Country of Ours:

27 How The Quakers First Came to new England – 00:09:27
28 How Maine and New Hampshire were Founded – 00:08:27

Oops. Forgot :) This will catch you up with the podcast feed:

Episode 32: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 11, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 11, Part 2 (8:52)
Episode 33: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 12, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 12, Part 1 (9:59)
Episode 34: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 12, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 12, Part 2 (5:27)
Episode 35: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 13, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 13, Part 1 (8:02)
Episode 36: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 13, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 13, Part 2 (4:38)
Episode 37: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 14, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 14, Part 1 (9:39)
Episode 38: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 14, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 14, Part 2 (9:36)
Episode 39: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 14, part 3:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 14, Part 3 (7:10)
Episode 40: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 15, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 15, Part 1 (7:44)
Episode 41: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 15, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 15, Part 2 (8:15)

And the very last part:
Episode 42: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 15, part 3:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 15, Part 3 (8:30)

LOL! How I love the Bagthorpes.

If you use MacFusion on Snow Leopard, you may have noticed that it’s broken, heh. I hadn’t run it in a while but this morning I got this charming error message every time I tried to mount a host: “Could not mount filesystem: Remote host has disconnected.”

After a bit of googling, I found this solution:
http://rackerhacker.com/2009/08/28/fix-macfusion-on-snow-leopard/

And it worked! So I thought I’d post here to help others find an answer.

(In case you’re wondering why I use Macfusion, I use ssh and vi for daily podcast maintenance, but when it’s time to add a few dozen new items it’s just easier to edit the file locally with Smultron. And who wants to ftp things back and forth if you don’t have to? ;-) )

The longer I go without writing a real post, the harder it is to get started again. So I just thought I’d write a little something this morning to get myself going.

Today I’ll take Henry in for a checkup, and then I hope we get to hang out with Celia and Chloe a bit in the afternoon, and then in the evening it’s possible that Bob and Chloe might come over to watch “Hud” with us, which just arrived from Netflix yesterday and is one of my favorite movies.

I’m reading my very first Edith Wharton novel, “The House of Mirth”, and it’s fantastic. I’m almost glad I waited this long to discover her,’cause now I have a whole lot of wonderful books to look forward to, if “The House of Mirth” is any indication. I also re-read “The Three MIss Margarets” and “The Hills at Home” last week. Both were as good as I remembered from reading them years and years ago. I’d like to read the two books that everyone is talking about — “The Hunger Games” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” — so I ordered them from my library but it’s “wait time unknown” heh. But I don’t usually like to buy fiction unless I’ve read it once and know I’ll want to read it again.

Knitting — I’m working on a top-down cotton tank top which I’d like to extend down into a little dress-thing if I have enough yarn. Well, even if I don’t I can get a few more balls of Knitpicks’ Simply Cotton in a coordinating color and just keep working till it’s long enough. It’s actually a lot further along than this photo shows. I’m working the body in a sort of seed stitch rib, which is k9, then a panel of k1p1 seed stitch for three stitches, then k9 again.

Also making a pair of Aargh! gyle Socks for a certain boy’s 15th birthday. These are also further along than the photo shows. Hmm, time to take some more photos.

Yesterday, August 10th 2010, was LibriVox’s 5-year anniversary. I can hardly believe it. We cataloged our very first free, public domain audiobook (The Secret Agent) in September of 2005, and I finished my first solo, The Road to Oz, in October 2005.

We produced a total of 30 audiobooks in 2005, and I remember thinking that someday we might reach 100. As I write this we have 3659 completed audiobooks in our catalog — in 29 different languages! Amazing!

More important to me than numbers, impressive though they are, is our community. We have without doubt one of the friendliest forums on the internet. It’s always so pleasant to browse through our working threads and see the cheerful interaction of our volunteers as we all work together, making audiobooks just for the love of it.

You can read a post from Hugh, our founder, here:
http://librivox.org/2010/08/10/librivox-turns-five/

and listen to our amazing 5th Anniversary podcast here:
http://librivox.org/2010/08/10/librivox-community-podcast-114/

Hooray for LibriVox!

I had such a nice dream last night about an old penpal, Peer Völkner. In my dream he came to visit us and we chatted in bad German (me) and bad English (him) and he drank Scotch with Dan and we had nice visit.

Peer and I were penpals from, oh, 1986 or so till the late 90s, and it was my fault entirely that I lost track of him. A couple of moves, a divorce, a lost letter…

I google his name from time to time, trying to find any contact info. It’s an unusual name, so there aren’t many results. There’s a Peer Völkner who wrote a book on business — that could easily be him. But never any way to contact him. Last I knew, he’d married a girl named Christine, and had a daughter named Paula (I think). And he most likely still lives in Germany. He went to the university in Bochum but has probably moved away from there by now.

Peer Völkner, where are you?

I’ve not been feeling well for the last couple of weeks, not sick, just really tired all the time, low energy, kinda down. But I’ve been entertaining myself with a variety of fun books/tv shows/podcasts/etc. Let me tell you about them.

The Cazalets
Grandma recommended a BBC miniseries called “The Cazalets”, so I got the first disk from Netflix and just loved it. Did a little research and found that it was based on The Cazalet Chronicles, a four-book series by Elizabeth Jane Howard. The books in order are: The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, and Casting Off.

Lucky for me, the main library owns all four books and sent them to my local branch for me, and I devoured them. I tried to make the final book last a while, but I just couldn’t slow down. Marvelous. The setting is pre-, mid- and post-WWII England, and the books tell the many and varied stories of all the members of the large extended Cazalet family. The author writes from the point of view of dozens of characters, so the reader sees events from many angles, which is lots of fun, and I was also really impressed by her ability to write realistic children and teenagers.

If you like books in which nothing really exciting happens but are all about people and the things that matter to them and how they relate to each other, I can’t recommend the Cazalets highly enough.

The Archers
A twitter friend said something a few weeks ago about how she had just discovered The Archers, a BBC radio soap, and was enthralled because someone was making meat pies… sounded like my kind of thing so I did a little searching and found http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/. The Archers is a radio drama that has been playing since 1950. It was originally partly educational, as the producer hoped that farmers would tune in for entertainment and “pick up messages that would help them feed a Britain still subject to food rationing.”

Anyhow, I subscribed to the podcast right away and have been a passionately loyal listener ever since. I get the emailed synopses, which are helpful because they provide names for the voices I’ve come to recognize, and then I can look those names up in the Who’s Who on the BBC site, and try to figure out how everyone is related. There’s going to be a sheep-shearing contest soon, so you’d better tune in.

Sherlock
The BBC (oh how I love the BBC) has created a modern Sherlock Holmes series: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t4pgh
The first episode aired last Sunday, and I watched it once with Henry and then again with Dan a couple days later. I loved it the first time, and loved it even more the second time, believe it or not. It’s fast-paced, witty, and suspenseful, and the casting is excellent; I am particularly impressed by Martin Freeman’s “Dr John Watson”. Watson is a tricky character to get right, but this Watson is perfect; a bit damaged and very intelligent. And Sherlock couldn’t be better.

My only criticism is that, well, ahem, you don’t want to look at the actual plot too carefully. ;-) But that’s ok, in the original stories you didn’t always want to look at the plot too carefully either. Dad would have enjoyed this show so very much. I’ll be thinking of him every time I watch.

Um, that’s enough for now. The family wants feeding. More later.

I think I forgot to mention that Fargo stayed with us for five days in the middle of July! He and Henry have been best friends since they met when they were about 7 and 8 and we lived in the same apartment complex, and they have stayed friends even now that Fargo lives in Arizona. Fargo is a quiet, pleasant, intelligent boy and a tremendous reader. The boys spent hours kicking balls around in the yard, talking, and reading, and we introduced Fargo to Mad Men, A Fish Called Wanda, and This Is Spinal Tap. It was a joy to have him stay with us, and we hope he can come back again soon.

Here are those handsome boys!

Catching up on “This Country of Ours”:

23 The Founding of Massachusetts – 00:08:25
24 The Story of Harry Vane – 00:05:41
25 The Story of Anne Hutchinson and the Founding of Rhode Island – 00:05:11
26 The Founding of Harvard – 00:04:36

Sorry, I’ve been under the weather. Here are the chapters that have posted to the podcast feed recently:

Episode 26: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 8, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 8, Part 2 (8:12)
Episode 27: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 9, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 9, Part 1 (9:36)
Episode 28: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 9, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 9, Part 2 (9:10)
Episode 29: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 10, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 10, Part 1 (9:47)
Episode 30: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 10, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 10, Part 2 (13:00)
Episode 31: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 11, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 11, Part 1 (9:27)

This makes me laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. It reminds me of listening to P.D.Q. Bach records with my parents when I was little. Thanks for the link, Chris :)

Henry and I went to the Tool concert last night! Tool is one of his favorite bands in the whole world, and it was a real dream come true to get to see them.

We had great seats, dead center and only 18 rows up from floor level. We got there nice and early. The opening band was, er, not too impressive but Tool was GREAT. Interesting music, fabulous musicianship, and no stupid “guitar god” posing like the opening band. They just played their music and rocked hard for two solid hours.

I really enjoyed most of the projections on the giant screens behind the band. Some of it was beautiful patterns and colors and shapes, really spectacular.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Tool lately in preparation for the show. Henry made me playlist of the songs that were likely to be played at the show, and there are several that I like a lot, so it was really exciting to hear them live!

Here are a couple of photos, one of the stage right when we got there (so you can see our view) and one of the band playing, which I cropped a bit.

If there’s anything better than taking your teenage son to hear a band that he loves, I don’t know what it is, and all three of Henry’s parent-type people get to take him to wonderful shows this year! His dad took him to OK Go, I took him to Tool, and Dan will take him to Rush next month :) We’re so lucky!

Episode 22: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 6, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 6, Part 2 (6:19)

Episode 23: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 7, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 7, Part 1 (9:49)

Episode 24: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 7, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 7, Part 2 (11:50)

Episode 25: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 8, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 8, Part 1 (9:59)

My sister Kathy and her husband Scott are in town! They’re staying with his relatives and have a very full schedule, but I met them at the fair on Monday (the last day of the fair). There was a one-day Favorite Apron contest that day, so I entered the apron that I just made for Chloe and took 3rd place in the “classy” division :) Kathy and Scott sat with me during the judging and we could hardly keep straight faces; it was so totally the epitome of the old-fashioned County Fair experience!

Here it is, modeled by the elegant Chloe:

And we looked at the woodworking and the Home and Hobby stuff together, and then my feet got tired so I left them at the fair and came home to grill a nice dinner. They came to our house after they were done at the fair, and Mom and Chloe and Bob and Henry and Dan were all there, too, so it was a jolly family gathering and we had a great time talking and eating for hours. After a bit, I got my camera, Dan and Mom got theirs, and Chloe and Scott whipped out their camera-phones — we were all snapping away at each other like paparazzi. It was hilarious, and we were laughing so hard it was difficult to take pictures.

Here are Chloe, Henry, me, Mom, and Kathy:

And here’s a nice candid shot of Kathy, Scott, and Chloe on the couch with Mom in the background.

I have the very best family in the world! I wish my other sister, Kirsten, and my brother, Ken, could have been here too, but oh well, maybe someday. (In case you’re wondering, Ken and Kathy are actually my half-siblings but I never think of them that way.)

Oh! I forgot to say that on Friday we saw the Sidewalk Stompers Marching Band at the fair!

I love marching bands!

Henry and I went up on the roof last night to see if any of the fireworks were visible from there. We were able to see about ten different displays going off in the distance! Lots of them were partly obscured by trees, but we had a clear view of several, way off in the distance to the south. That was fun!

On Friday Chloe went with me to the fairgrounds for the Home and Hobby awards ceremony, which was adorable. It’s held in the Turf Club up in the top of the grandstands at the fairground. They serve lemonade and cookies, and the dear sweet Home and Hobby women read off the names of the winners, who then run up to the front and get their certificates. This year they showed pictures of the winning entries on a big screen. We recognized nearly all of the items, so it was fun to know which person made them. I got three certificates — a Best of Division and two Donated Awards, all for the fingerless mittens. Here’s what the room looks like:

And then Chloe and Bob came back to our house and we all watched Toy Story 2 and WALL-E. Great movies.

Oh, yesterday I finished my recording of Through the Looking-Glass. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as Alice, but it was still fun. It felt more self-conscious than Alice, and less fresh. Still, a classic! Download it here: http://librivox.org/through-the-looking-glass-by-lewis-carroll-3/ or you can always wait till I push it through my podcast feed in a few weeks.

Episode 21: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 6, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 6, Part 1 (8:40)